Ronnie Golden

Ronnie Golden's journey has been a long andfascinating one.

From opening shows for Tom Jones, Scott Walker and EngelbertHumperdinck as a teenaged guitarist, he worked with DavidBowie in his Beckenham Arts Lab days then went on to form cult late 70srenegades Fabulous Poodles whose album Mirror Stars outsoldboth The Clash and The Jam in America in the early 80's.

Within a few short weeks of that band'sdemise he was doing stand-up at London's Boulevard Theatre alongside ComicStrip regulars Rik Mayall, Ben Elton, a nascent French andSaunders and Alexei Sayle and performing a legendary Buddy Holly in thefirst series of BBC 2's The Young Ones. He remains the only originalmember from The Comic Strip team to still be actively working ontoday's comedy circuit. There were several guest spots and cameos: heplayed Tracey Ullman's son inC4's first Friday NightLive then performed with Mac McDonald in SaturdayLive and was a detective and then a doo-wop singer in a coupleof Lenny Henry Shows. His voice, regularly heardon Spitting Image was featured on the No.1 single The ChickenSong/We're Scared Of Bob.

Radio jingle writing won him an award formost interesting use of music in Independent Radio Awards in the early 90s for60sec acapella song for Ariel Automatic and his harmonica could be heard onTV's Finger of Fudge commercial(!!)

He's played an MI6 agent in the 1986 movie TheFourth Protocol (with Pierce Brosnan and Michael Caine,) a heroin addictin C4's How Much Is Too Much? won awards for composing advertisingjingles, and is a much sought after voiceover artist.

Arthur Smith Sings Leonard Cohen, atwo-man piece Ronnie performed with Arthur, won considerable plaudits on theEdinburgh Fringe 2000 and went on to the Ambassadors Theatre in London's WestEnd and then onto Montreal Comedy Festival.

His 6 piece R&B/Soul outfit Ronnieand the Rex still perform their Club Senseless nights in N. London and theWest End and, over the past five years, have recorded four seriesof Radio 4's The Right Time for which Ronnie wrote songs andsketches.

A selection of some of his bestcompositions for the band is available on cd Return of theFabulous Poodle (Turns)

Eight nights of solo music gigs in NewOrleans back in April 2003 led to him writing an article about these shows aswell as reviewing the Jazz Heritage Festival for July issue of Wordmagazine.

He performed standup in Brit.Comat the Montreal Just For Laughs Comedy Festival in July 2003 as wellas a reprise of the Leonard Cohen show with Arthur.

A winning combination with comedylegend Barry Cryer has yielded several successful Edinburgh Festivalshows and a live cd: Rock 'N' Droll on Laughing Stock Recs. They regularlyperform their 2 hour show in theatres across the UK.

At 2004 Edinburgh Festival he played adrug-addled, alcoholic, self-destructive blues singer Prince Royale in ‘noir'boogie woogie / blues musical The City Club which became asmall budget Hollywood movie entitled Dark Streets. Hecollaborated on the score for this with composer / musician James Compton.

He appeared in Radio4 sitcom Ed Reardon's Week and recently on the panelshow Act Your Age and has guested in several series Radio 2music / comedy show Jammin' .

Ronnie has just returned from a seriesof shows at the Edinburgh Festival . First A Fender, his first eversolo show, is an autobiographical guitar lesson and he hopes to tourthe UK with it.

New Zealand-born composer Mark Hardyinvited Ronnie to contribute vocals to his songcycle Listen To Me whichwas released late 2010.

The City Club, blues/boogie musical, isopening for off-Broadway previews at the Minetta Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village,New York at the end of March 2012. Alongside a whole bunch of songs he'swritten for the project he has two great new numbers Copacetic! and Why Did ItHave To Be You? the big soul ballad which closes Act One.